Do I Have To Food Plan To Lose Weight?

Food planning is the workhorse habit of sustainable weight loss and maintenance. Making a daily food plan is a tool to help you become an adept self-manager who is keenly aware of her true tastes and preferences for food. Food planning helps you design the food lifestyle that is right for YOU. It's also a way to practice keeping promises. 

You also need to be willing to get planning wrong many times in order to learn your true tastes and preferences around food because you are learning how to plan for what and how much is right for you without thinking there are good food or bad food choices.

We also plan because we want you to be able to practice telling yourself no successfully. When we say, 'No, we can have that tomorrow; we didn't plan for it,' we practice the skill of delayed gratification and learn how to stay focused on the benefit of the long-term goal of weight loss rather than always following your in-the-moment urges around food. 

Food planning is not a way to parcel out food to yourself, unlike the restrictive dieting food plans you've followed before.  It's a way to make decisions ahead of time about 'what' to eat while leaving the questions of 'when' and 'how much' to your body. This is a process of converging your managerial brain together with the wisdom of your body to create lasting and sustainable change.